Gipuzkoa Provincial Council Invisibles.
Making visible a problem the law keeps invisible.
The law protects children’s identities — a great step forward for our society, and one that keeps them safe. But what happens when it prevents us from putting a face to a problem affecting so many children? In a society as media-driven and image-driven as ours, what has no face today does not exist.
The Government of Gipuzkoa (the Provincial Council) asked us for help finding foster families for children living in vulnerable situations who need a family environment that brings them support and security during their childhood.
During the strategic analysis we observed that most awareness campaigns on this issue come across as cold because they are impersonal, and at times the absence of children produces a blurry message that creates interpretive noise, with connotations easily associated with “problems.” But the reality is very different. Foster children are full of life, hope and the desire to give.
How do you make a problem visible when the law prevents you from putting a face to it? Many people and families tend to prejudge, thinking that because they come from families with “problems,” “foster” children might be an unknown. That unknown would resolve itself positively with a single glance at their faces, their smiles, their zest for life. But this is where these children face a double handicap: child protection law prohibits showing their faces.
We were so convinced that showing their faces would help us connect and empathize with everyone that we devoted the creative effort to finding a way to do it while respecting the law.
And that’s how we decided that the best way to make them visible was to cover their faces and paint a face on their hand. We created a story. We shot the spot with real foster children and families. We ran out-of-home, bus shelters, radio and 360 digital.
The result: the campaign surpassed all previous numbers, tripling the number of interested foster families.
“You've made one hell of a campaign” The number of interested people is remarkable, given that a year earlier the figure was roughly three times lower.
